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Content and the New Google Algorithms
By Bob Wakfer (c) 2004

It has been almost a year since (November 16, 2003) the famous, 
or infamous, Google Florida update. Most observers agree that 
this was the start of some fairly radical changes in the way 
Google determines how to place sites on their search results 
pages (SERPs). Their algorithms have continued to fluctuate and 
change ever since. Nobody, including the author, can be sure of 
the changes that have been made, or of what the most important 
criteria for SERP placement currently are. However, I will 
suggest in this article that the old dichotomy between content 
and links may have been reconciled by the changes in Google's 
algorithms over the past 10 or 11 months.

In the past there have been various approaches to Search Engine 
Optimization. Two distinct schools of thought have arisen and 
have been expounded. On the one hand, the school of "Content 
is King" claimed that content was the most important element 
in SEO. While on the other hand the school of "Links are King", 
claimed that inbound links were the best way to get top rankings. 
I believe that the new Google algorithms may draw these two 
schools of SEO thought together. 

A word about Google before we go on. I will use the term search 
engine and Google interchangeably through out this article. I am 
aware that there are other search engines, but Google still has 
in excess of 50% of the search engine traffic and is really the 
major target of most SEO.

What we know for sure: 
The reason there has been such fierce debate between these two 
camps is that the search engines will never reveal their formulas 
for ranking web sites in their search results. Debate tends to 
be supported by questionable empirical evidence, and a high 
degree of speculation. What we do know for certain is the 
following.

Content:
If one builds a web site in which the content is very unique, 
Google will rank that site in the SERPs on the basis of this 
content. This is a combination of the words found in the title, 
in the page headings, and the body of the text. This fact was 
demonstrated a few months ago in an experiment done by Mel 
Nelson and reported on WebProWorld.

What Mel's experiment indicates is that, for pages in unique 
niche markets, the content of the web site may be adequate to 
obtain a high ranking in Google's search results. Webmasters who 
work on pages of this type maintain that content got them their 
ranking and that content is the only really important element 
in SEO success.

This is an interesting claim with regards to Google, because 
Google was built upon the founders' use of PageRank. PageRank 
assumes that incoming links are a type of "vote" for the 
importance and relevance of the page. Google's algorithms have 
always used, or placed a great deal of importance on, inbound 
links in ranking pages for position in their SERPs. In fact, 
Google will not keep a site in its index unless there is at 
least one inbound link.

Despite this, the "Content is King" school persists in some 
circles, and is characterized by a thought, or claim, that 
anyone who participates in aggressive link building is slightly 
suspect, or is in some way cheating the system.

Linking: 
We also know that it is possible, through aggressive link 
building campaigns, to have a site rank very high in the SERPs 
because of search terms or keyword phrases that do not appear 
anywhere on the page. In the past, this was achieved by using 
the keyword phrases in the anchor text of the link. This 
practice has become known as "Google Bombing" and may still be 
illustrated by doing a search with the phrase "miserable 
failure", which returns the official White House biography of 
George W Bush in number one position.

For the uninitiated, anchor text is the actual text phrase on 
which users would click to follow the link. In the past, "Click 
here" was commonly used for anchor text. Today, one can almost 
tell whether a site has been optimized by the absence of "click 
here" used in links.

The "Links are King" camp maintains that content is relatively 
unimportant to the ranking of a site. Unfortunately, this is 
often interpreted as an assertion that there should be no effort 
or thought given to content. While this may be true for pure SEO 
achievement, even the "Links are King" advocates acknowledge 
that once visitors arrive on the site they must find what they 
are looking for or the site will not be successful. However, to 
get people to the site via the search engines, content is not 
important for sites in highly competitive market segments that 
wish to rank well for popular search terms.

Content should be written as completely and as carefully as 
possible, but for competitive search terms, it is not critical 
to getting a site a top ranking in the SERPs.

How the New Google May Reconcile These Two Camps: 
Google has made some dramatic changes in the ranking of sites 
in their SERPs since November 16, 2003. There have been several 
more adjustments, or updates, since then, but things are 
definitely different now than they were prior to November 16th.

No one can be certain of the changes Google has made. Google 
watchers know that over the past couple of years, the search 
engine has bought companies and registered patents for a variety 
of technologies involved in semantic analysis. Many believe that 
Google is attempting to do a more in-depth analysis of the 
relevance and of the content of the page on which the inbound 
link originates.

In the past, PageRank was simply a mathematical calculation 
based on the PageRank of all the pages linking to each other 
or sharing links. The original assumption, no doubt, was that 
people would only link to and from pages with similar, or 
complementary, information. In other words, relevant information. 
As the value of links, or backlinks, as inbound links are known, 
became evident, webmasters started to solicit links from 
non-related sites.

The problem with this sort of system is that it is open to a 
certain amount of sp@mming. It is now thought that Google is 
using some combination of Local Rank, Applied Semantics, Topic 
Sensitive PageRank, Hilltop or Stemming in an attempt to more 
precisely measure the relevance of an inbound link. These tools, 
or technologies, would all perform some degree of content 
analysis of the page containing the link. This analysis would 
determine if the page was relevant or topically related to the 
content or information on the page to which it is linked.

The Connection: 
If what has been said in the section above is true, suddenly 
content has a new importance in the ranking of a page. Now it 
is not so much the content of one's own page that will get it 
ranked in the SERPs, but the content of the pages from which 
the links are coming. All interconnected pages are now giving 
each other a boost in relevance. In addition to the mathematical 
PageRank boost, it suddenly becomes important that all 
interconnecting pages have relevant, or related, content. We may 
have come full circle. Links are the factor that will get a page 
ranked highly in the SERPs. However, content is what will give 
your backlinks their ultimate ranking value. 

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Bob Wakfer is the owner of Computer Partners (http://www.compar.com) 
and a long time student and practitioner of SEO. Computer Partners 
offers web site design, hosting and search engine optimization 
for its clients. If you would like to discuss any of these 
services with Bob you can e-mail him at bob@compar.com 
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